


the single girl

by firstaudrina



Category: Mad Men
Genre: Adoption, Gen, Parent Death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-09
Updated: 2012-12-09
Packaged: 2017-11-20 16:09:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,159
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/587235
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/firstaudrina/pseuds/firstaudrina
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This is her now. This is who she is.</p>
            </blockquote>





	the single girl

**Author's Note:**

  * For [FifteenDozenTimes](https://archiveofourown.org/users/FifteenDozenTimes/gifts).



> This ended up more of a gen character piece than anything else, but hopefully you will still be happy with it! :)

_You probably think I'm a creep_ , Pete had said, and Peggy didn't deny it. 

It's funny – she remembers Pete from her first day; she had immediately disliked him (everyone immediately dislikes Pete) but he'd made her skin prickle too. He looked like a boy Peggy had a crush on in high school, tall and rail-thin ( _beanpole_ , her mother would've said) with his dark shell of hair and eyes startlingly blue. Peggy thinks the boy from high school was named Todd. It surprises her that she isn't sure – maybe it was Tim? – because she'd mooned over him so long and so hard but now it's just gone, a wisp of smoke, a hazy memory. Maybe-Todd. Up until the – up until her stay in the hospital, she'd thought Pete might be like that too. One day he'd be Maybe-Pete, one of those office mistakes Joan warned her about on her very first day. But Peggy will never forget him now, no matter how very much she might want to.

So, beanpole with blue eyes, looking like Maybe-Todd but not sounding like him, voice missing that slightly rough and familiar Brooklyn sound. Pete's voice was so precise and clipped, with an underlying rich boy superciliousness. She knew he looked down on her a little, probably unconsciously, for being from Bay Ridge, not well off but well mannered. Joan called him a weasel once under her breath and Peggy had laughed, barely felt guilty about it.

There was something uncanny about Pete: something familiar but not. She trusted him but she didn't trust him at all. 

It was enough for Peggy to let him make love to her on an office couch. She didn’t know it then, but trouble had already started.

The thing is, Peggy never played bride growing up. She never stuck a pillowcase on her head and mimed walking down the aisle, that odd shuffle-step. And Peggy doesn't want to play bride now, either, even though she _could_ have, if she'd been a little less strong or her family had been stronger.

When she thinks of the baby-that-wasn't (which she doesn't unless she has to, and everyone in her life conspires to make sure she doesn't have to), when she thinks of Pete, Peggy thinks of playing bride. She thinks of her mother's life. She think of ever-widening hips and floral dresses, muttered Norwegian cursing. She thinks of Catholic schools and home-for-dinner-by-five. Pigtails and hair pulling, sulky silences and hopscotch. She thinks of playgrounds.

When she thinks of the baby-that-wasn't (which she doesn't), she only thinks of it as an it. She never even held it. She has no memory of what it's face looked like; did she even really look at it? Peggy feels like her time at the hospital was a fever dream, like she'd been asleep all that time; all she remembers crisply is Don coming to see her. _This never happened_ , he'd said. _It will shock you how much it never happened_. She'd latched onto that. It was the only way she got out of that place, the only way she got sane. 

(It was a boy. Her sister had a boy not long after and it was bizarrely like Anita's childhood dream of them getting married at the same time and having babies at the same time. Only Peggy wasn't married and she didn't really have a baby and she never shared those dreams. 

It was a boy. Is a boy. He probably has blue eyes. He probably doesn't look unlike Anita's son with his big blue-sky eyes and soft curly blonde hair. Or maybe – Trudy bought Tammy to the office once and the little girl's hair was soft and straight and dark. Maybe he – maybe he has dark hair too.

He isn't a baby anymore. Wherever he is, he's old now, three or four. He speaks. He walks. He looks like someone, maybe even like her.)

Even if she may wonder sometimes (she doesn't), Peggy has no regrets. Holding him only would have made it harder to blot him out. He was an anomaly, like his father. That's it. Maybe-Pete. A maybe-son. 

Whatever feelings Peggy had for Pete died in that hospital with the last of her schoolgirl romanticism. She came out of it with her eyes wide open and her spine straightened with pure resolve.

Her mother only had brief words of comfort while Peggy dipped in and out of her muddled fever: _God gives us obstacles_. Peggy wanted to say that she hadn't been sure about God since she was in the seventh grade and she just hadn't been able to reconcile Him with the world she lived in.

Peggy was the only witness to her father's death. It divided her childhood neatly into two separate parts: before and after. 

Before, there was cotton candy and minor annoyances, skipping arithmetic homework to play jump rope. There was the rush of joy when her dad got home from work – Peggy was a daddy's girl through and through – him looking worn-out but still summoning a smile for her.

Her mother scolded, complained, went on about this or that as she cooked, hand on her hip as she stirred with the other. Peggy's dad would roll his eyes and she'd giggle and crawl into his lap. Peggy loved her dad. She looked like him.

After he died, things were different. Peggy became another kind of girl, quieter and more hesitant. 

She thought about that a lot while she was in the hospital. Peggy wondered what her father would think of her. She wondered if he would understand or if he would be ashamed. She liked to think he'd have been the only one completely on her side, but she knows that's unlikely. He probably would have given her that sad-eyed look of disappointment he had, the one that made him look like a hound dog, and not say a word. He was a man of few words, Peggy's father.

The baby-that-wasn't divides her life just as neatly and afterwards Peggy is not so quiet and not so hesitant, though it takes time. There just isn't a reason to be anymore. 

She thought it would be impossible to look at Pete again but she finds it's not; she can meet his very blue eyes straight on and not bat an eyelash, even as she finds an understanding there that she no longer has any interest in. A part of Peggy is gone but she feels more complete than she ever has in other ways, a strange dichotomy she doesn't try to think too hard about. This is her now. This is who she is.

Without it she's not sure she ever could have left the agency. It's what keeps her head high as she walks out, Don's kiss burning on the back of her hand. 

She doesn't look back. She doesn't look at all. Peggy moves forward, only moves forward; there's no regret to be found.


End file.
